Not true at all. In the US, only specific regions in Georgia, for instance can grow Vidalia onions. Grow the same onions anywhere else, and you can't call them vidalias. Lots of places have region-specific brand identifications that are govermentally controlled.

This is the same kind of patriotic warbbling that comes out of some of the lesser-minded US politicans. It wouldn't be so desperately sad if it wasn't for the fact that French culture is so pervasive all over the world. They're not "Defending" French culture, they're stagnating it.

That's because both are two-step verification systems. It's something you know (Your password) and something you have access to - your iOS device (there is also another choice, something you are - that's biometrics, but they've proven elusively hard to make commercially viable at a reasonable cost). If you have a door at your work place that has a keycard and a pin code, that's two-step verification too. I've been using Battle.net Auth for years. Blizzard encourages it...

Working in retail computer sales - they are fully delusional I assure you. People have NO IDEA what computing power for cost really is. This week I had a customer try to return a laptop because for a 350$ it "Wouldn't give me more than 20 FPS in Warcraft." Now, I'm a WoW guy, so I boot it up and check it out to see how it works - guy had everything set to Ultra. These are setting I only attempt with my 200$ video card. I turn down his graphics and I get him 35 FPS with...

The only crack in the market right now is if they offered a 4s-size/power phone with LTE (which the carriers would like because 3g is so over-satured that moving a low-end phone to LTE would give them some breathing room, and let them offer "Full line of LTE iPhones", which sounds good.) Combined with a less expensive casing, maybe a less fancy camera, there is probably some room for it.
It might be the 4ls or something like that. The cost of engineering a LTE chip...

I'm sure XCOM is fun, but I'm much more excited about the concept of Blizzard's new Duel-of-the-Plainswalkers-like online CCG game, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. A well known (and for a long time, the premier) Mac Game developer is bringing its expertise to the Mac on first release, and the first mobile platform will be the iPad. That's huge.